Residents say there is heavy fighting in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where Israeli tanks and troops are conducting a new ground operation.
The Israeli army said it had killed 20 “terrorists” there in the past day, and that one of its soldiers had also been killed in the north.
Hamas said its fighters had targeted Israeli forces in Jabalia and its refugee camp, while the Hamas-led Civil Protection Agency said Israeli strikes had killed 19 people.
Civilians in Jabalia and nearby Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia have been told to evacuate south by the military, which said on Sunday that intelligence indicated Hamas was trying to “rebuild its operational capabilities in the region.”
It warned that the operation would involve “systematic attacks and the radical destruction of terrorist structures.”
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday evening that Israeli forces were besieging the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia and that it would run out of fuel within hours.
It also said patients and medical staff had been asked to evacuate the hospital, as well as nearby Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals.
Israeli forces launched a campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage.
More than 41,960 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry
This is the third time that Israeli forces have invaded Jabalia and its refugee camp in the past year. The latest operation in May displaced tens of thousands of people, killed hundreds and caused widespread destruction.
On Monday, Jabalia resident Asmaa Tayeh told the BBC that she and her family had to leave their home for the fourth time in a year.
They have returned to her grandparents’ home in Gaza City’s al-Nasr district and, like many civilians in the north, are reluctant to move south, fearing that if they do, they will never return will come home.
Despite Israeli commitments, Palestinians fear that the army plans to implement a plan proposed by the former head of Israel’s National Security Council to completely clear northern Gaza of the 300,000 to 500,000 civilians believed to live there.
Under Giora Island’s plan, the north would then be declared a “closed military zone” and the estimated 5,000 Hamas fighters there would be besieged to force the group to release the remaining Israeli hostages.
“The situation is becoming so dangerous that we don’t have much hope of going back,” Asmaa said.
The Israeli military also ordered civilians in parts of the southern city of Khan Younis to evacuate after Hamas fired rockets into Israel from there on Monday, slightly wounding two women in Kfar Chabad in central Israel.
In central Gaza, the civil protection agency said 17 people, including children, were killed when a three-story house in the Bureij refugee camp was hit by an Israeli attack overnight.
Medics at a hospital in the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp confirmed the death toll, AFP news agency said.
The Israeli military said it targeted Hamas operatives in the camp and “conducted a precise strike on a structure from which a terrorist cell was planning terror activities.”
Additional reporting by BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams in London
